Major trends for the underlying economics of the Australian and near shore ICT markets in 2009. Key facts, statistics and data driven research about the state of the Australian and near-shore ICT markets. Industry economics brings together Longhaus’ market sizing, forecasts, and other data driven research and is the home of the Longhaus Australian Tech Index™ and the Longhaus Pulse™. This segment includes: ICT Vendor and Suppliers, ICT Investment, major ICT Users and more.

Major trends for the Business Software segment of the Australian and near shore markets in 2009. Longhaus defines this segment as including software solutions to support the automation of business processes across the modern enterprise. This segment includes: ERP, CRM, Enterprise Performance Management, Social Collaborative Platforms, Information Content Management and more.

The Longhaus Australian Tech IndexTM is a quarterly index based on a proprietary model designed to monitor the health of the Australian ICT industry. The model measures activity within the industry across four (4) dimensions: a) demand forces including ICT spending and ICT importing, b) supply factors including influx volume of venture capital (VC) funding, c) strength of vendors indicated by revenue, and workforce size, and d) consumer factors including internet subscription rates. Collectively, these dimensions and their accompanying indicators provide an independent gauge of the state of the ICT industry not currently available to Australian decision makers. By providing calculated weightings to these indicators and incorporating heuristic views from Australian Chief Information Officers, Longhaus is able to provide unique and important insights into the current and future state of the Australian technology economy.

At the Australian Information Industry Association’s (AIIA) annual trends luncheon held in Melbourne in May 2007 the analyst panel received the following question from the crowd: “Who should the CIO report to within an organisation?” The final consensus of the panel was that the reporting relationship of the CIO, and the ICT resources under their control, is a function of the current value of ICT to deliver business outcomes at a particular given point in time. For example, if an organisation relies heavily on its ERP solution and a major upgrade of the system is undertaken, then the CIO will often be elevated to a member of the organisation’s board. In such a situation it is not uncommon for the CIO to be found reporting directly to the CEO who is engaged in organisational risk management and therefore requires visibility into the process. In contrast, an organisation whose ICT operation is in business-as-usual operational mode may find their CIO reporting to the CFO; the focus in the latter case being the management of cost and ensuring stability.

The simultaneous explosion of both collaborative software and collaborative devices is causing adoption problems for enterprises. The technology and process matrix is complicated, and the messages are complex. Some of the main drivers for these challenges are:the interoperability of social software spanning the boundaries of social, professional, public and private networks; traditional transactional systems attempting to implement social technology capabilities without due consideration for the differences in data and information types; andmobility solutions demanding stringent distinctions between contact processes, collaboration processes, and presence awareness.